-Economic and Political Weekly   The inadequate availability of drinking water and proper sanitation, especially in Rural India, leads to innumerable deadly diseases, harms the environment, and also affects vulnerable populations, such as persons with disabilities and women, exposing them to sexual violence. Providing access to sanitation facilities in rural areas of India has been on the agenda of the Government of India for the past three decades. However, a reinvigorated thrust...

-The Hindu The very process of development and change in India may be generating new forms of social and economic competition that manifest themselves in terms of social bias Popular debate around social biases in India is structured around two competing narratives. One view holds that as an urbanising country with rapid economic growth over the past few decades, the importance of ascriptive identities such as caste and religion is gradually eroding....

-The Times of India BENGALURU: Farmer suicides have been on the rise in neighbouring Maharashtra and Telangana. But Karnataka appears to be bucking the trend, with the number of cases showing a sharp decline over the past five years. According to latest data from the state agriculture department, the number of farmers' suicide in Karnataka has declined from 145 in 2009-10 to 50 in 2014. This despite drought and other natural calamities...

-The Indian Express The Ministry of Rural Development seems undecided on whether to blame former Minister Nitin Gadkari or the media for some of the problems with the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). An internal note of the Ministry - prepared ahead of a Performance Review Committee meeting this month - blamed Gadkari for contributing to delays in the payment of wages under the scheme. Soon after...

-The Indian Express It was an interesting discussion. The subject was the recent ordinance promulgated by the government of Rajasthan banning men and women without a Class X certificate from contesting zila parishad and panchayat samiti elections. To contest at the sarpanch level, a candidate will need to have passed Class VIII (Class V in tribal areas). In this state, with a particularly poor record of literacy among women, tribals and...